#4 Seeing and Believing (Mike & Riel Mysteries)

by Norah McClintock

  Rebecca shook her head. “Why don’t you do it this time?”

  “Me? What would I say?”

  “Say what I said.”

  I looked around. I’d been hoping that Rebecca would keep doing the talking. She was good at it—she was friendly and convincing. I was afraid I wouldn’t pull it off.

  “Ask her,” Rebecca said, nudging me and nodding to a short, brown-skinned woman wearing an orange T-shirt. She looked a lot older than the rest of the clerks.

  I took a deep breath and went over to her. Rebecca stayed where she was.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “How can I help you?” she said, just like the guy behind the register in the first store we’d gone to.

  “I’m looking for a girl who works here,” I said. “She’s about this tall.” I held my hand up to show where the top of her head would be if she were standing right beside me. “She usually wears an eyebrow ring when she’s not working, so she has this little scar right here. She has a spider tattoo right here on her arm. And she has black hair. Short. She’s pretty.”

  “You must mean Amanda,” the woman said. “Except she changed her hair color. She’s a blonde now.”

  That had to be her.

  “Yeah, Amanda. Is she working today?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Do you know when she will be working?” I said.

  “You have to talk to the shift supervisor,” she said. “She’s up there.” I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a guy in a bright orange T-shirt behind the counter and two women in bright orange T-shirts. One of them was restocking shelves. The other one was straightening the snack display.

  “Who’s the shift supervisor?” I said.

  “Lorraine. She’s the one in front of the snack counter.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Lorraine turned out to be young enough that she could have been the daughter of the woman I had just been talking to.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “How may I help you?” Lorraine said, smiling at me, but not really smiling, if you know what I mean. It was more like a reflex. They really pounded it into their heads in these stores: smile, smile, SMILE. The bright orange shirt who had been restocking shelves walked to the back of the store. I saw her say something to the woman I had just been talking to.

  “I was wondering if you could tell me when Amanda is working,” I said.

  Her smile vanished.

  “Amanda is no longer with us,” she said.

  That figured. Nothing could ever be easy, right?

  “Do you know how I can contact her?” I said.

  She didn’t ask me why I wanted to know. She didn’t hesitate even a split second. She just said, “No.”

  “It’s kind of important,” I said.

  An electronic bell sounded as two customers entered the store. Lorraine glanced at them, her eyes sharp as she checked them out. I wondered if she checked everyone out like that, or if she saved it for customers who looked like those two—big guys, one with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up so I couldn’t see his face.

  “I really need to get in touch with her,” I said.

  Lorraine turned back to me. “Sorry,” she said, except that she didn’t sound sorry. “Store policy. We don’t give out information on employees.”

  “But you just said she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Or former employees.” She turned back to the snack display and plumped up a couple of bags of chips before setting them back carefully into the chip rack.

  I turned to look at Rebecca.

  The bright orange T-shirt who had been restocking the shelves breezed past Lorraine.

  “Going on break,” she said. The electronic bell sounded as she pushed her way out the door.

  Rebecca and I left the store and stood outside, trying to decide what to do next. People went in, people came out. A pile of kids all of a sudden descended on the area. Some of the kids went into the video store, but most of them stayed outside. A couple of guys came out of the store, pushing their way through the kids who were outside, horsing around and being really loud. Lorraine looked out at them. They were the same two guys she’d checked out on their way in. Then I saw that I’d been wrong—she wasn’t looking at them. No, she was looking at the cop car that was pulling up to the curb outside the store. Seeing that car made me clench up—every time I ran into a cop, it was bad news. Rebecca must have noticed because she nudged me. There was a sign posted in the store window and another stuck in the window of the store next to it, one of those discount shoe places. The sign said, Loitering will result in police being called. I wondered if Lorraine had called the cops when the pack of kids had showed up. The kids didn’t even seem to notice. The cops got out of the car. The two guys who had pushed through the kids and were standing a little farther down the curb turned suddenly and walked away, which made me think that maybe Lorraine had special radar, maybe she’d been working in the store long enough to know who to watch. The cops went up to the kids. One of them pointed out the sign. The kids groaned and made a lot of noise, but they got going. The cops got back in their car and sat there, watching. Rebecca and I started to move, too. That’s when the orange T-shirt who was on break—on a smoke break, it turned out—said, “Why are you looking for Amanda?”

  “What?” I turned around. She was standing out of range of the store windows.

  “You were asking about Amanda. How come?” She blew some smoke in our direction. Rebecca waved it away with one hand.

  “It’s personal,” I said. I wished the cops would go away. They were making me nervous.

  The orange T-shirt snorted. “If it’s personal, how come you had to ask Millie her name?”

  I guessed Millie was the first woman I had spoken to. I glanced at Rebecca. She shook her head and said, “Go ahead and tell her.”

  Huh?

  She shook her head again and looked at the bright orange T-shirt.

  “The last time he was in here, he talked to her,” she said. “And he really liked her. But he’s also the biggest wuss on the planet. He was afraid to ask her for her name and number. So this time he dragged me along for moral support. He was going to ask her out.” She gave me a withering look. “You know what Grandpa’s always saying—you have to strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “You two are related?” the bright orange T-shirt said.

  “He’s my brother,” Rebecca said. Her voice was so full of contempt that I was glad I wasn’t related to her. “You are such a loser,” she said to me.

  “You really are if you’re interested in Amanda Brown,” the bright orange T-shirt said, looking at me. “She got fired in record time—two weeks. I thought I’d never see her again. No such luck. She dropped by a couple of days ago and returned her T-shirts—as if anyone else is ever going to wear them.” She looked me over. “You don’t seriously want to go out with her, do you?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “What can I say?” she said to the bright orange T-shirt. “He really knows how to pick them.”

  “What was she fired for?” I asked.

  “For being late—every day. Megan D. only hired her because a friend of hers recommended Amanda.”

  “Megan D.?” Rebecca said. I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking: maybe we should talk to this Megan D.

  “There’s three different Megans who work here,” the bright orange T-shirt said. “Megan Doherty—Megan D.—is the store manager.”

  “Megan Doherty?” Rebecca said. She sounded surprised. “Thin, shoulder-length brown hair, dark brown eyes?”

  The bright orange T-shirt nodded. “You know her?”

  “I think she went to school with my sister,” Rebecca said. Her cheeks flushed slightly. “With our sister.” Rebecca had an older sister who lived in Vancouver. I’d never met her. “Except I thought she worked for your competition.”

  I stared at her.

  “Yeah,” the bright orange T-shirt said. “Tha
t’s her. That’s why they hired her—because she knows the competition. But she sure doesn’t know trouble when she sees it. I could have told her Amanda wasn’t going to work out. I got a vibe off her the first time I saw her. But Megan hired her anyway because a friend of hers asked her to. I was right. Amanda turned out to be a total disaster. Besides never getting to work on time, she was always screwing up the cash. Everyone complained about her. And she had weird hair, you know?” She made it sound like that was the worst thing. “Then Megan found out that she’d lied on her resume. She had no choice—she had to fire her.”

  “So I guess Megan and her friend aren’t friends anymore, huh?” Rebecca said.

  “I’ll say,” the bright orange T-shirt said. “Megan’s friend was killed last week. Shot to death in a convenience store. Do you believe it?” She took one last drag on her cigarette before throwing it down on the ground and crushing it out. “You got a pen?” she said.

  Rebecca fumbled in her purse. I bet she was thinking what I was thinking: it was a small world.

  “I meant him,” the bright orange T-shirt said, nodding at me. “You still want to ask Amanda out?” I nodded. “I can give you her phone number.”

  Rebecca had found a pen and was scrambling for paper, but the bright orange T-shirt was already rattling it off, so Rebecca wrote the number on the back of her hand.

  “Ask me how come I know her phone number by heart when I can’t stand her,” the bright orange T-shirt said. “Go ahead, ask me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How come?”

  “Because, like I said, Amanda was late for work every single day that she worked here, and every time, Megan got me to call her and tell her to get her butt into the store or else. She would have fired anyone else after the first two warnings. But she kept getting me to call Amanda, kept giving her extra chances because Amanda was special, on account of Megan’s friend.” She sounded disgusted. “I gotta get back to work.”

  “Do you know where she lives?” Rebecca said.

  The bright orange T-shirt shook her head. Rebecca jabbed me with her elbow and nodded at the T-shirt. Right.

  “Thanks for the number,” I said.

  “Whatever,” the bright orange T-shirt said.

  Rebecca grinned at me.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “What do you think, Mike?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “But I don’t want to phone her,” I said. “I want to talk to her in person.”

  “Okay,” Rebecca said. She was striding along slightly ahead of me, in a hurry to get somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out where because we had no idea where Amanda Brown lived.

  “Hey, wait,” I said as we passed a phone booth. “Don’t we want to look up her address?”

  Rebecca looked first at me and then at the phone booth. “There’s no phone book in there, as usual.”

  “Okay, so let’s call Information.”

  “And ask them what?”

  “Amanda Brown’s address.”

  Rebecca gave me a funny look. “Do you have any idea how many Browns there are in the city, Mike?”

  “Yeah, but how many Amanda Browns are there?”

  “Or A. Browns,” Rebecca said. “And that’s assuming she has a phone listed under her name, not under one of her parents’ names.”

  Right.

  “So, you have a better idea?” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” She looped one arm through mine, and we started walking again. Ten minutes later we were at the public library and using a computer to get onto the Internet. Rebecca typed in a URL that, it turned out, took us to the phone company’s online directory.

  “What about all those A. Browns?” I said.

  Rebecca clicked on something, read the phone number on the back of her hand, and typed it onto the screen. Then she clicked Search. A name and address popped up. Rebecca glanced at me while she wrote down the information.

  “What’s the matter, Mike?” she said. “You never used a reverse lookup before?”

  Riel had a computer at home that he let me use. But, no, I had never used it to look up someone’s address. Mostly I used it for homework, games, and downloading music.

  I looked at what Rebecca had written down: T. C. Brown and an address. I knew the street. It was located south of my school in a not-so-great neighborhood.

  “So, you want to go there?” Rebecca said.

  “Now?”

  I glanced at my watch. I had to be at work in exactly one hour. I was pretty sure I’d be able to make it.

  “Okay,” I said.

  So that’s what we did.

  The street Amanda Brown lived on was even more rundown than I remembered. The reason I knew the street: my uncle Billy used to live there before he started to take care of me.

  The houses were all small and semi-detached. They all looked shabby, but that was mostly because they had rain gutters that sagged or they needed a fresh coat of paint or new windows. It looked like the people who lived there couldn’t be bothered. Probably some of them couldn’t, or the houses were owned by landlords who couldn’t be bothered—that had been Billy’s problem. But I bet some of them were owned by people who didn’t have the extra money for a paint job or a whole new set of windows.

  Amanda Brown’s house was one of the most decrepit. The screen in the outside door was torn. The grey paint on the porch floor was mostly scuffed off. I glanced at Rebecca. She was staring at the house. I wondered if she’d ever been up close to one as run-down as this. Rebecca’s parents were pretty well off. Rebecca’s mother was an artist and an art teacher. Her father was a contractor. Not only was their house nice, it was pretty inside, with lots of bright colors and paintings.

  “Ring the bell,” Rebecca whispered.

  There was a doorbell to the left of the door. I pushed it, but I didn’t hear any ringing inside, so I opened the screen door and knocked on the inside one. Rebecca edged backward, like she didn’t want to be associated with me anymore. But when no one answered, she said, “Maybe you should knock again.”

  I didn’t have to. The inside door creaked open, and a woman looked out at us. Her hair was all messed up and her face was puffy, which made me think we had woken her up.

  “Is Amanda here?” I said.

  “Around back,” the woman said and started to close the door.

  “Around back?” I said.

  “In the garage,” the woman said. The door shut in my face.

  I turned and looked at Rebecca.

  “Around back,” I said.

  Rebecca stepped aside to let me go down the porch steps first. She followed me around the side of the house and along the narrow laneway. The whole yard was closed in by a wooden fence that was so high that even if I stood on tiptoe and reached up, I couldn’t have touched the top of it. A tired old garage leaned to one side at the back of the yard, like it was getting ready to lie down and go to sleep. The big front door, the one a car would go through, was shut. I went up on my toes and looked through one of the small windows that ran in a row across the top of the door. The window was crusted with grime—Riel would have had me scrubbing it with a sponge and bucket of soapy water if it had been his—but I could make out someone inside, near the back. It was a girl. She was rooting around in a pile of stuff at the back of the garage.

  “I think that’s her in there,” I said to Rebecca in a quiet voice. Rebecca nodded. She wasn’t nearly as confident here as she had been in the video store. I led the way around to the side of the garage where there was another door. I thought about knocking but decided not to. Instead, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The girl was on her knees in one of the most cluttered garages I had seen in my life. There were boxes and bags of stuff—it was impossible to tell what was in most of them—along with broken-down furniture, a pile of old car tires, a couple of rusted old rotary lawnmowers, and a work table—homemade, from the look of it—with a bunch of tools scattered all over it. Riel
had a workbench and lots of tools down in one part of his basement. But his things were a million times neater than these.

  “Amanda Brown?” I said.

  Her head spun around faster than the girl’s in The Exorcist, and she had pretty much the same look on her face.

  “Who are you?” she said. “And who said you could come in here? This is private property.”

  “Your mother told us you were back here,” I said.

  She gave me a sour look. “My mother?”

  I guessed that whoever we had just talked to was not Amanda Brown’s mother.

  “The woman in the house,” I said.

  Amanda Brown stood up slowly. She looked me over, then she checked out Rebecca. I couldn’t tell whether or not she remembered Rebecca from the funeral.

  “Who are you anyway?” she said.

  “I’m Mike. This is Rebecca.”

  Amanda was standing at the back of the garage with her arms folded over her chest. She looked pissed off.

  “I mean, what do you want?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s about that woman who was killed in that convenience store robbery,” I said. “You knew her, right?”

  “Says who?”

  “You were at the funeral,” Rebecca said. “We saw you. I spoke to you.”

  Amanda’s eyes shifted to Rebecca. “Yeah? So?”

  “So you wouldn’t have gone to the funeral if you didn’t know her,” Rebecca said.

  Amanda shrugged. “A friend of mine lives near there. She goes in the store all the time. I went to the funeral with her. So what?”

  “A friend of mine was in a store last Friday when it got robbed,” I said.

  “Yeah?” she said. “And?”

  “And he says you were in the store when it happened.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My friend. He says you were in the store when it was robbed.”

  When I talk to Rebecca, she always reacts. I’d be lying if I said I always knew what she was thinking, but I could always tell she was thinking something. But this girl? She’d have made a killer gambler. She didn’t react at all. There was no expression on her face. She just looked at me and waited. When I didn’t say anything—two can wait—she said, “I don’t know what your friend is talking about.”